ESL

At the ESL panel, we had many speakers guide us through their struggles learning English. One of the speakers, Ellen Eunhee Seo, was very kind and sent her notes for her presentation to us, so we could add some detail to what we discussed in our October 8th workshop. To begin with, Ellen Eunhee Seo discussed both external and internal motivations behind learning a second language. She discussed the importanc of learning sentence structure and grammar concepts, as they will help writers and readers understand each other more clearly. She did discuss something that was particularily interesting: the different situation which could make learning a second language easier. Some of her ideas include: 

• Email communication
• Fluency development: Free writing focusing on the content, not the grammatical forms
• Extensive and intensive (close) reading
• Working with an editor
• Reflective learning attitude and consistent effort
• Native language support

For any more information about her specific presentation, please check out the ESL panel section under “Fall 2009 Handouts.” Anyways, a special thanks goes out to Ellen Eunhee Seo, as well as our other speakers,  Kang Sun and Khalid R Alrajeh, for sharing their struggles and offering such great tips for success for learning to write in a 2nd language.

We hope to see you at the rest of the October workshops! For more details about the upcoming workshops, please see the post about the most recent workshop, Punctuation Pointers.